by Edgar Quinet
LEVIATHAN
Look toward the sea again.
THE SERPENT
There too I see nothing but the fish Macar,8 who has stolen his trunk from Behemoth; if I had fins bound to my coils, I would know what is growling in the depths of the sea before you had taken a single step.
LEVIATHAN
So, you see nothing that is greater than us; we are still the masters; creation has stopped at us. Oh, I shivered for a long time in the fear that the rocks, in rising above us, might vomit up a master with scales of stone, and that he would force me to go back into the abyss from which I have emerged. But you—you have seen nothing?
THE VINATEYNA BIRD
I have gone up as far as the highest branch of the world-tree; I have followed in its flight the most rapid of stars; I have descended into valleys to depths where the rain does not fall; I have found nothing anywhere but the morning lark, the djinn with black wings; the loriot that hangs two threads of silk from her nest and rocks her fledglings above the nascent world.
LEVIATHAN
And you, tell us what you have seen at the in the watery deeps.
THE MACAR FISH
With my trunk I have sounded the whirlpools of foam. To the utmost depths I have plunged into the gulf of the sea; there is nothing to be heard but the roaring water, nothing to be seen but the waves painting palaces of coral green.
LEVIATHAN
So we are alone. Neither here, nor there, nor on high, now down below, is there anyone but us. The mud has been formed so that I might leave my footprint at every step. The world has unfurled so that the serpent might envelop it with his coils. Now that the eternal vulture is carrying it away in its claws, fleeing with its prey at full tilt, everywhere, in all the heavens, we are the gods.
ALL
Yes, Leviathan, you have said it; we are the gods.
THE OCEAN
Search, continue searching. Life the branches of the forests; divide the waters of the springs more carefully. Dig deeper, ever deeper, into the mud. Who has rummaged in that marble crack? Who has shaken the fold of that cloud? It is there that he has hidden himself in order to listen to you. When you came, I was talking to him. Leviathan, there is a blade that rings truer than all your scales; bird with the golden beak, there are wings more capacious than yours; serpent with a thousand heads, there are bites more venomous than those of your mouth. Before the daylight, all through the night, he drives my waves before him as the sea-lion drives his cubs. He woke me up when everything was asleep; he disappeared as soon as the sun began to shine.
ALL
Liar! A curse on your waves, greener than the venom of vipers. May the djinn dip their wings in our foam! May the Tchinevad Bridge9 collapse over your waters. Let us mingle together all our cries: the rubbing of scales, the flapping of wings, the sliding of coils. Let the talon be sharpened on the trunk, the beak on the branch, the ivory on the granite; let the hoof resonate on the sand, the fin on the waves, the tail around the flanks. Murmurs of leaves and savannahs, burning nostrils, bounding manes, screeches, whistles, howls, let the noise grow louder and be prolonged, let the rock quake, the avalanche slide. Tell us, old Ocean, if his voice is more powerful than ours. The devas10 are circling in the air; the gryphon is hollowing out the crests of the clouds with its horn; eternity is putting its crown on the head of lions. Life is swarming, life is buzzing, life is streaming; rumps are bounding, sweat is pouring from nostrils like light from the nostrils of the sun. More manes are fluttering in the wind than there are lianas in the woods; variegated feathers, crawling pearls, gazes falling from the clouds on to the shadow of a leaf, thirsty for life, thirsty for death; tell us, Ocean, whether that is not enough to be a God. Days will come, time will accumulate, but a time will never come that will see our claws worn down, nor the tips of our wings soiled with mud, nor their colors washed out by the rain. After a thousand years, the drying spring will reflect, as today, our nascent feathers, our down that had molted. We shall always pass by the same route without ever tiring; we shall always extend our wings in the clouds without ever furling them; we shall always be setting forth on the same voyage. Let the birds begin to form a point to cleave the wind; let the lightest take flight. Three days and three nights let him fly straight through the sky; let him cry to the four winds: “Where is the king of worlds?” And Leviathan will descend crawling into the marshes, and reply from the gulfs of the earth: “We are the gods.”
II.
CHORUS OF GIANTS AND TITANS
Brothers the hour has come; let us emerge from our caverns. Our slumber has been long, longer than the dreams that weighed upon our breasts in that immense night. Before being, the universe, like a dream fading away, always to be remade, has passed through our souls and made us shiver on our rocky beds. What monstrous shadows, which will never be weighed, in spirit, on our breathless bosoms! Brothers, do you remember the endless expectation that slept within us, those half-born worlds that crawled relentlessly over our thoughts of yesterday, that speech on our lips for a thousand years, that thirst for life, the shadow of Ocean that dried up at our bedsides, the phantom of God that poured out dreams, filling us to the brim, the tongues of light that were neither life nor death, neither day nor night, and the serpents that brooded beneath their fetid wings the specter of the universe hatching in our dreams?
A GIANT
Do you also remember a confused sigh that emerged from abysms, which every being repeated? Do you remember a drop of blood that hung from the vault, and moaned as it fell into an invisible lake? That dream presaged for our wakefulness an eternal dolor. May it please God that we can go back to sleep, and never again pass its threshold!
CHORUS OF GIANTS AND TITANS
Courage, companions; let us all set to work; let us fashion subterranean cities. While the mud is moist, let us knead the rocks in the depths of their beds. Let us trample underfoot the ferns taller than palm trees; let us crush beneath our tread the hundred-cubit crocodiles wallowing beneath the forests of reeds. Let us mingle with the clay of marble the flowers of ferns, with the bark of the palm-tree, with the palm-tree the jaw of the serpent, the beak of the eagle, the scale of the fish and the teeth of the elephant. Let us crush the clay between our hands, let us lay the slate in its bed. Courage, the work rises up like a wall. On the trunks of forests are amassed the carcasses of monsters run around on the shore. Let our giant thoughts rise up with the rock and be inscribed on its flanks; let runes, hieroglyphs, letters of porphyry, variegated jasper and granite, conserve forever the language and history of the giants. Let us bend down and roll up the vaults of caverns as easily as a mat. The giant tree of the universe is already shivering in the breath of the morning. Beneath its shade, the well of past time is being hollowed out; eternity is wrinkling at its edges. Our centuries of life will commence, bushier than its foliage; our empire will be more durable than the bark of its trunk, stronger than the claw of the vulture that has built its nest therein. See our God already rising from his seat; he has the firmament for a skull, the lianas of the woods for hair; for a belt, he has the Ocean knotted around his waist; for a sword, he has the light, every spark of which is a star.
A GIANT
Malediction! It is against us that he is rising.
(The island sinks.)
III.
THE ETERNAL FATHER to the Ocean
Like a word poorly written in my book, go efface the earth.
THE OCEAN
I shall make haste. Already, nothing remains of the summit of the world but the tower of a king, who is eating a banquet from silver plates. My deluge will enter the hall within the hour.
THE KING, at table among his princes
The deluge, like a lake, is drowning the low-lying areas; it is filling the troughs of slaves. Let the Ocean growl, if it wishes; it will not come as far as this; my guards will halt it at the limit of my kingdom.
FIRST SATRAP
If it comes, king of kings, it will be to lick the soles of your feet
.
SECOND SATRAP
Or to bring you a diadem of its pearls.
THE KING
1.
A thousand kings are sitting at my table. All the grandeurs of the earth have climbed my stairway this morning. A hundred nimble dromedaries have brought wine on their backs to slake thirst, and a hundred racing camels bread for hunger.
2.
The wine will be drunk and the bread eaten. Before dusk, the stars will have finished their banquet of light, and the Ocean will have poured the last drop from its gourd into its cup. But our lives of patriarchs will never end, not tonight, nor tomorrow...
Silence! What is that noise? I believe I heard an approaching wave.
FIRST SATRAP
It’s nothing; it’s your people sighing.
THE KING
The noise is getting louder.
SECOND SATRAP
It’s your empire sobbing.
THE KING
1.
Let us begin again, then, to sing until midnight. The rain is falling, the lightning flashing. Before our eyes, the ship of the world is being wrecked for our amusement. In dying, the Universe, at our feet, only requests a smile from our royal lips; let us whistle over its ruin.
2.
Ocean, distant sea, have you counted accurately I advance the steps of my tower? There are more than a hundred of marble and bronze. Take care, poor angry child, that your foot does not slip on my floor-tiles and your saliva does not moisten my banister. Before having climbed half of my steps, ashamed and breathless, veiling yourself in your foam, you will have gone home, thinking: I am weary.
3.
In the caverns, in the lairs, in the grottoes where you pass, tremulously, the lion encounters its trembling prey; the serpent hides beneath the woman’s foot, and cities of giants wait, mute, with one foot in your mire and the other plunged therein up to the knee.
4.
The hawk and the sea-eagle flee before you; feet dragging, they climb their rock to take shelter against you, their brood beneath their breast; with beak, wing and blazing eye bristling, they are afraid of your wave. Pursue the hawk and the sea-eagle, if you want to take their down-clad chicks in the egg.
5.
Here, in my imperial aerie, there is nothing but nestling kings coiffed with rubies, risen to the utmost height of their glory; how can your waves upon waves ever rise as high? From our feast, we will throw you a crumb; go, be on your way.
FIRST SATRAP
Someone’s knocking at the door.
THE KING
Help me.
SECOND SATRAP
It’s your heir; I don’t know you anymore.
THE KING
Who’s there?
THE OCEAN
Open up; let me in.
THE KING
Mercy! Sea of islands, Ocean of foam, what do you want at my door? If you’re asking for my cloak, here it is.
THE OCEAN
Your cloak, good sir, is too small for my shoulders.
THE KING
If you want my golden cup, full of wine to intoxicate you, take it in your wave.
THE OCEAN
That your cup, on my lips, might slake my thirst…that’s a joke, my master.
THE KING
Well then, here’s my crown; put it on your head.
THE OCEAN
Away with your crown! As a headband, I prefer my dust of foam.
THE KING
What do you want, then?
THE OCEAN
To sit down there, at your table, in your place. Go and reign over my grains of sand. One more step, and I’ll be on your throne. Here I am—it’s very comfortable! Here, where there was a world, there’s a fleck of foam; in my turn, therefore, I shall be king. I want to play with the scepter, with the odorous tiara, with the mud of the banquet; I’m licking the guests’ cups to the dregs. This royal wine is inebriating me; my waves, which are staggering, are my subjects. There—let them bow down to the ground! Now they’re sighing; now they’ve fallen silent; now they’re sobbing. My rivers, digging out the vine-branches of their banks like grape-growers, are my cup-bearers, bringing me something to drink. This wave is too bitter; let it return to its source! Another, another, and then a hundred, and then a thousand. Everything bends the knee at my caprice! With a breath, I make and unmake my roaring cities; my walls, to defend me from thieves, cost me nothing more, to build up to the clouds, than a breath. My kingdom has no borders, nor exit-gates. The fletched arrow can do nothing against me; the sword that strikes me rusts in my breast. Near or far, there is no neighbor who can think of dethroning me. If I soil myself, I have what is needed to wash away the stain; and nothing leaves any trace behind me but my cloak, when the sun dyes it red.
THE ETERNAL FATHER
Enough, majesty of foam, drop of water in your turn, already too inebriated. Here, for your trouble, is some uprooted grass, with a little moss, to gnaw on my shore.
IV.
Human Tribes Assembled on the Summit of the Himalaya
A CHILD
Father, look out there, far away, in the middle of the sea, the water covered in foam! Oh, tell me, is that a great eagle that has touched it with its white wing? Is it nor rather a baby swallow, which was unable to get back to its nest, and has drowned in the sea?
ANOTHER CHILD
No, it’s the date-flower that I floated in the stream, and which fled of its own accord from wave to wave, from bank to bank, far away, to where there is no longer any branch to rock it like a baby asleep in its cradle.
AN OLD MAN
No, it’s not a baby swallow that has drowned in the sea; no, it’s not a date-flower whitening like the foam. Can’t you hear a plaint emerging from every wave, a murmur that finishes up on the sea-bed? Neither the plaint of the waves nor the murmur of the sea could rise any higher if the whole world had been swallowed up. I seem to hear a thousand voices dying away, a thousand secrets of times past crouching down and gradually falling asleep, like white-haired old men, beneath the sands and the sea-shells.
CHORUS OF YOUNG WOMEN
Oh, Father, don’t look out to sea for so long. The quivering is that of lotus leaves rejoicing in being born. The murmur is that of springs seeking their path and asking the banana-trees and flowers they encounter: Banana-tree with the green shade, a diamond sparkling in the sun, little bird that has just drunk my water, tell me, what path should I take to descend into the bottom of the valley?
“Yesterday’s fresh spring, where I bathe the tip of my wing, over which my branches incline, in which my azure neck is reflected, pass beneath my shade. Spread out over your steps, follow my light feet as you go, and you will find the Ocean at the bottom of the valley, waiting for you. It is waiting for you on gilded sand, with blue waves the color of the sky.”
Oh, my Father, don’t look any longer out to sea; that is where the voices are that you can hear babbling around us.
CHORUS OF TRIBES
Greetings, day! Greetings, night, daughter of day! Greetings, sea, rivers, mountains! As the dew of the first day of the world swells the flower of the tamala before the sun has drunk, as the water leaps in its source before having crossed its bounds, as the chicks of hawks and Malayan vultures frolic in their nests of foliage before knowing the summit or the plain that extend over their downy heads, so our tribes, newly-hatched today, jostle in the aerie, and remain suspended over the world. The leaf of the palm-tree quivers in the forest, the water of the lake ripples at its spring, the soul quakes in our bosom.
Oh, who can tell the soul in or bosom, the leaf of the palm-tree the water of the spring, who has made the daylight so bright, the night so dark and the wind so swift? Who can tell the mountain who has made the waves so blue to bathe it; the sea, the star to plunged into it; the horse’s main, the wind to stir it; the pebble, the bed along which it rolls?
Blue wave, covered in foam, I will make you a bed of seashells and gold, if you tell me who drove you over my feet. Syca
more with a hundred branches, I will wash you with the water of a new-born spring if you tell me who gave you your tresses of leaves; serpent, handsome serpent all dappled with colors, I will make you a road of sand on which to slither, if you tell me where the person is who gave you the blue of the firmament and the gold of the mountains to paint your scales. Rocks, call to me to show me where he has marked his hundred-cubit feet; I will follow him all the way to the mountain of gold. If he descends into the valley, I shall descend. The wood-pigeon chick, when it flaps its wings, has its father to guide it out of the nest, but me, where is my father to show me my path?
THE VOICE OF WOMEN
Is it necessary to go already?
CHORUS OF TRIBES
Oh, yes, it’s necessary to go. Can’t you see the swallows already taking flight over the sea? My heart rises up in my bosom, like the stork in its nest, when the day of the departure comes. Are not the clouds gathering on the horizon, like travelers beneath flaxen tents? Is not the river hurrying, for fear of arriving an hour too late? Are not the islands passing into the mist like teals? The wind is sweeping the sea-hawks away, shaking the manes of the wild horses; where, then, are they all going? Is it not us alone who are not crossing our threshold?—we who got up in the night, like the spring of the earth that does not know where it will spend the evening. Since everything is in turmoil, let’s go, let’s follow the crowd.
